Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (best free ereader TXT) 📕

“Hush!” answered Harriet, and dandled the bundle laboriously, like some bony prophetess⁠—Judith, or Deborah, or Jael. He had last seen the baby sprawling on the knees of Miss Abbott, shining and naked, with twenty miles of view behind him, and his father kneeling by his feet. And that remembrance, together with Harriet, and the darkness, and the poor idiot, and the silent rain, filled him with sorrow and with the expectation of sorrow to come.

Monteriano had long disappeared, and he could see nothing but the occasional wet stem of an olive, which their lamp illumined as they passed it. They travelled quickly, for this driver did not care how fast he went to the station, and would dash down each incline and scuttle perilously round the curves.

“Look here, Harriet,” he said at last, “I feel bad; I want to see the baby.”

“Hush!”

“I don’t mind if I do wake him up. I want to see him. I’ve as much right in him as you.”

Harriet gave in. But it was too dark for him to see the child’s face. “Wait a minute,” he whispered, and before she could stop him he had lit a match under the shelter of her umbrella. “But he’s awake!” he exclaimed. The match went out.

“Good ickle quiet boysey, then.”

Philip winced. “His face, do you know, struck me as all wrong.”

“All wrong?”

“All puckered queerly.”

“Of course⁠—with the shadows⁠—you couldn’t see him.”

“Well, hold him up again.” She did so. He lit another match. It went out quickly, but not before he had seen that the baby was crying.

“Nonsense,” said Harriet sharply. “We should hear him if he cried.”

“No, he’s crying hard; I thought so before, and I’m certain now.”

Harriet touched the child’s face. It was bathed in tears. “Oh, the night air, I suppose,” she said, “or perhaps the wet of the rain.”

“I say, you haven’t hurt it, or held it the wrong way, or anything; it is too uncanny⁠—crying and no noise. Why didn’t you get Perfetta to carry it to the hotel instead of muddling with the messenger? It’s a marvel he understood about the note.”

“Oh, he understands.” And he could feel her shudder. “He tried to carry the baby⁠—”

“But why not Gino or Perfetta?”

“Philip, don’t talk. Must I say it again? Don’t talk. The baby wants to sleep.” She crooned harshly as they descended, and now and then she wiped up the tears which welled inexhaustibly from the little eyes. Philip looked away, winking at times himself. It was as if they were travelling with the whole world’s sorrow, as if all the mystery, all the persistency of woe were gathered to a single fount. The roads were now coated with mud, and the carriage went more quietly but not less swiftly, sliding by long zigzags into the night. He knew the landmarks pretty well: here was the crossroad to Poggibonsi; and the last view of Monteriano, if they had light, would be from here. Soon they ought to come to that little wood where violets were so plentiful in spring. He wished the weather had not changed; it was not cold, but the air was extraordinarily damp. It could not be good for the child.

“I suppose he breathes, and all that sort of thing?” he said.

“Of course,” said Harriet, in an angry whisper. “You’ve started him again. I’m certain he was asleep. I do wish you wouldn’t talk; it makes me so nervous.”

“I’m nervous too. I wish he’d scream. It’s too uncanny. Poor Gino! I’m terribly sorry for Gino.”

“Are you?”

“Because he’s weak⁠—like most of us. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t grip on to life. But I like that man, and I’m sorry for him.”

Naturally enough she made no answer.

“You despise him, Harriet, and you despise me. But you do us no good by it. We fools want someone to set us on our feet. Suppose a really decent woman had set up Gino⁠—I believe Caroline Abbott might have done it⁠—mightn’t he have been another man?”

“Philip,” she interrupted, with an attempt at nonchalance, “do you happen to have those matches handy? We might as well look at the baby again if you have.”

The first match blew out immediately. So did the second. He suggested that they should stop the carriage and borrow the lamp from the driver.

“Oh, I don’t want all that bother. Try again.”

They entered the little wood as he tried to strike the third match. At last it caught. Harriet poised the umbrella rightly, and for a full quarter minute they contemplated the face that trembled in the light of the trembling flame. Then there was a shout and a crash. They were lying in the mud in darkness. The carriage had overturned.

Philip was a good deal hurt. He sat up and rocked himself to and fro, holding his arm. He could just make out the outline of the carriage above him, and the outlines of the carriage cushions and of their luggage upon the grey road. The accident had taken place in the wood, where it was even darker than in the open.

“Are you all right?” he managed to say. Harriet was screaming, the horse was kicking, the driver was cursing some other man.

Harriet’s screams became coherent. “The baby⁠—the baby⁠—it slipped⁠—it’s gone from my arms⁠—I stole it!”

“God help me!” said Philip. A cold circle came round his mouth, and he fainted.

When he recovered it was still the same confusion. The horse was kicking, the baby had not been found, and Harriet still screamed like a maniac, “I stole it! I stole it! I stole it! It slipped out of my arms!”

“Keep still!” he commanded the driver. “Let no one move. We may tread on it. Keep still.”

For a moment they all obeyed him. He began to crawl through the mud, touching first this, then that, grasping the cushions by mistake, listening for the faintest whisper that might guide him. He tried to light a match, holding the box in his teeth and striking at it with the uninjured